The sound of a locked library

A few years ago, my library closed. The closure was temporary -- the building was being replaced -- and long scheduled, but it left a hole in the neighborhood. A closed library is not just a locked building, it's a message.

This explains something of the impact of the news that the library budget going before the Multnomah County Commission would close the library on Mondays. Coming after the thumping 82 percent passage of the library levy last week, it seemed a strain on the powerful bond between locals and their library.

It might also cause patrons to wonder -- reading makes you wonder about things -- whether the weekly closure is connected to proposals for a separate library taxing district, which could appear on the ballot as soon as November, that could return the county library to its seven-day status.

Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen points out, with annotation, that the county and the library had always warned that passing the levy would not prevent cuts, especially in hours. "We've always been crystal-clear," said Cogen Thursday, "what the impact would be."

Cogen explains that in this economy, he could not support a levy of a size that would keep the library whole. To limit closures, and partly fill the shortfall, the board proposes to dedicate $10 million in one-time-only county revenues to the library.

It's hard to challenge Cogen's argument on either of those points, although there didn't seem to be anything in the levy campaign that suggested passage would still involve a full day's closure. As for looking down the road to setting up a library district -- and that may be as long as two years down the road -- Cogen says, "If we're going to establish a permanent funding mechanism, my preference would be that we have a mechanism that provides full service."

There is a particular connection between Multnomah County citizens and their library, which last year once again led the nation in usage among libraries serving fewer than a million people. And there is a particular stress with a weekly closure, cutting off parents looking for a place to take their children, off-line locals looking for Internet access and all the neighborhoods thinking about their branch in the possessive form.

Deputy Director Becky Cobb points out that the proposal closes no library branches, that the library is $6.5 million short of maintaining current service levels and that only by exhausting reserves has it been able to continue seven-day service until now. She also explains the library thought this particular closure would be "historically understood by the public," since temporary financial pressures caused library closings on Mondays several times in the past two decades.

Each time, of course, the county, and voters, soon moved to restore daily service. Previous times may not have been this hard, but the library closing impact is similar.